---------------------------------Physical Description---------------------------------
Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar, and had been the wonder of the Shire for sixty years, ever since his remarkable disappearance and unexpected return. ... And if that was not enough for fame, there was also his prolonged vigour to marvel at. Time wore on, but it seemed to have little effect on Mr. Baggins. At ninety he was much the same as at fifty. At ninety-nine they began to call him well-preserved, but unchanged would have been nearer the mark. There were some that shook their heads and thought this was too much of a good thing; it seemed unfair that anyone should possess (apparently) perpetual youth as well as (reputedly) inexhaustible wealth.

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 1, A Long-expected Party

---------------------------------History---------------------------------mid-July 2941 On the Quest of Erebor:
The party was assailed by Orcs in a high pass of the Misty Mountains as they went towards Wilderland; and so it happened that Bilbo was lost for a while in the black orc-mines deep under the mountains, and there, as he groped in vain in the dark, he put his hand on a ring, lying on the floor of a tunnel. He put it in his pocket. It seemed then like mere luck.

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Prologue, Of the Finding of the Ring

Late August 2941:
There was the usual dim grey light of the [Mirkwood] forest-day about him when he came to his senses. The spider lay dead beside him, and his sword-blade was stained black. Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach, as he wiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath.

"I will give you a name," he said to it, "and I shall call you Sting."

The Hobbit, Ch 8, Flies and Spiders

29 September 3021: Frodo and Bilbo depart over Sea with the Three Keepers.

The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix B, The Tale of Years: The Third Age

---------------------------------Books Authored---------------------------------
This account of the end of the Third Age [The Lord of the Rings] is drawn mainly from the Red Book of Westmarch. That most important source for the history of the War of the Ring was so called because it was long preserved at Undertowers, the home of the Fairbairns, Wardens of the Westmarch. It was in origin Bilbo's private diary, which he took with him to Rivendell. Frodo brought it back to the Shire, together with many loose leaves of notes, and during S.R. 1420-1 he nearly filled its pages with his account of the War. But annexed to it and preserved with it, probably in a single red case, were the three large volumes, bound in red leather, that Bilbo gave to him as a parting gift. ...

But the chief importance of Findegil's copy [of the Red Book] is that it alone contains the whole of Bilbo's 'Translations from the Elvish'. These three volumes were found to be a work of great skill and learning in which, between 1403 and 1418, he had used all the sources available to him in Rivendell, both living and written.

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Prologue, Note on the Shire Records

---------------------------------Entertainment & Recreation---------------------------------
He loved maps, and in his hall there hung a large one of the Country Round with all his favourite walks marked on it in red ink.

The Hobbit, Ch 1, An Unexpected Party

'What are moon-letters?' asked the hobbit full of excitement. He loved maps...; and he also liked runes and letters and cunning handwriting, though when he wrote himself it was a bit thin and spidery.

The Hobbit, Ch 3, A Short Rest

As a boy he [Bilbo] used to practise throwing stones at things, until rabbits and squirrels, and even birds, got out of his way as quick as lightning if they saw him stoop; and even grown-up he had still spent a deal of his time at quoits, dart-throwing, shooting at the wand, bowls, ninepins and other quiet games of the aiming and throwing sort -- indeed he could do lots of things, besides blowing smoke-rings, asking riddles and cooking...

The Hobbit, Ch 8, Flies and Spiders

Of the various activities listed here, quoits is a game in which flat rings are pitched at a stake, the object being to get the ring around the stake. Shooting at the Wand is a game in which a narrow slat is used as an archery target. Bowls is an old game played on a smooth lawn with weighted wooden balls. Ninepins, sometimes also called skittles, is like tenpin bowling but with only nine pins set up at the end of an alley and bowled at.